


madhuravani

by weaslayyy



Series: vivaham [2]
Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, and also 2 non canon backstories for our intrepid heroines, and contains lots of drinking, and inner commentary, idk if that came thru but it seemed like a nice way of putting it, this is mostly gen fic between sivagami and devasena, who find in each other qualities that they seek in themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 13:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15641271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaslayyy/pseuds/weaslayyy
Summary: it takes 30 days and almost so many wineskins for Sivagami to find herself a daughter.





	madhuravani

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MayavanavihariniHarini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayavanavihariniHarini/gifts).



> Madhuram means honey, and sweet which is where I’m guessing the name “madhuravani” or according to the internet “one with a sweet voice” comes from, but it also means wine. I freely profess to knowing zero Sanskrit or Hindi but I think that makes my title a pun.

Sivagami was 25 years old when she gave birth to her first, a son, and when her maid presented the child to Sivagami's husband the first thing he said was:

“Good. No need for a second, now that we have a boy.”

Sivagami, weak from the hours of pain and the months of growing a child inside her, nodded.

She had always hoped for a daughter.

******

In the 25 years since, Sivagami has rarely thought of the girl she might have raised -- Mahishmati, not to mention its two princes, have proven to be far more than any woman could ask. Yet, there are moments when she craves the companionship of someone who understands the difficulty of hiding swords in saris, or even the soul-crushing despair of listening to men explain the rules of law that you yourself have set in stone.

She sets her thoughts to a daughter-in-law, one for each of her beloved sons. Women with intelligence, strength, mercy and perhaps a kind ear for her mother in law who has been robbed of true feminine companionship for half a lifetime. She is tired, she thinks, of standing alone. She will be glad for the companionship, not to mention the lessening of responsibility once her son takes the throne.

Enter, Devasena.

Sivagami manages to dismiss the court only five minutes before Baahubali attempts to throw the future of Mahishmati into turmoil for the second time in the space of 30 minutes. She walks slowly as befits the aging royalty she now is and is thus in the perfect place to catch the last snatches of his plan to introduce his new wife to the comfort only Mahishmati’s finest bed can offer.

It is two hours past noon.

“Baahu,” Sivagami snaps in a way that had taken both motherhood of toddlers and regent of men to perfect. His full-bodied snap to attention goes some way towards soothing the ache of his earlier betrayal. Truly, Sivagami had always hoped that her sons would find the type of great love that she had been denied but finds that the reality of it is more unpleasant than she could have expected.

“Yes, mother.” He bows his head slightly in deference, and so does his wife. Sivagami looks around and debates the benefits of having her mandate be followed in public, before remembering that that was no longer the certainty of an hour ago. She beckons for the happy couple to follow, and pretends that she does not feel relief when she can hear their steps behind her.

The doors to Sivagami’s rooms are closed, and once all servants have been dismissed she allows herself to lose some of the tension from her shoulders. What she wouldn’t do for a glass of wine, but then she must be careful: there is no need for the royal family to produce another publically drunken fool.

“Mother,” Sivagami’s son calls out, cutting through the haze. “You had something to say?”

Yes. But how to put it?

“Your marriage,” Sivagami begins, “was a little .... unorthodox.”

In what Sivagami has already realized is typical of her daughter in law’s innate sense of pride, Devasena begins to bristle. Baahu gently pats the hand closest and she subsides, the continued rustling of her silks the only harbinger of an explosion.

“Not that it was ... inappropriate,” Sivagami backtracks, “simply that Mahishmati custom, as my husband so ... helpfully pointed out in Court, decrees that Royal Weddings occur here in the presence of the Great God who has blessed us for generations.”

For a moment there is silence, full bodied like the one before a declaration of War.

“You have already decreed that we will have a second ceremony.” Devasena is quiet, and Sivagami wonders if she should worry that neither she nor her new daughter seems particularly interested in maintaining eye contact with one another. “We did not have the opportunity to declare our consent, but I agree that it seems an acceptable compromise.”

“Good,” Sivagami says, allowing some warmth to slip into her voice, almost as a reward. “Then you will understand why I must have you stay in my rooms rather than my son’s until the wedding.”

“ _What_?” The light of Sivagami’s life, her beloved son in all but blood stands up, his voice loud in a way he has never allowed in her presence. Sivagami wonders if this is what heartbreak feels like, and turns to face his wife. She seems pensive.

“Mahishmati will not recognize the legitimacy of our marriage unless the wedding is conducted in its temple,” Devasena says slowly, parsing her thoughts as she speaks. Sivagami will have to break her of the habit eventually, but she finds that she appreciates a look into the mind of a woman who has so entranced her child.

“They believe what they see,” Sivagami offers. “It will be easier this way, I think.”

“I _married_ Devasena,” Baahu says, as if he were a child of five rather than a man of 20 more years. “We _belong_ to each other!”

Devasena hums slightly, bringing her hand up from where she was clutching her skirts to pull on her husband’s tunic. “Will you prevent us from seeing each other?”

“Would I be successful?” Sivagami is a woman who rules over a man’s kingdom, who raised two exceptional sons whose claim to the crown was so strong that it took winning a war to decide the throne. She accomplishes ten impossible things before breakfast, but this will not be one.

“No you would not,” Devasena replies with a confidence Sivagami cannot help but admire, tugging Baahu’s tunic again until he resumes his seat. “I will stay with you, and while I do my husband and I will try to be discreet.”

“Thank you,” Sivagami says, and nods in dismissal, accepting her son’s kiss on the cheek with all the wounded pride and grade she can muster. If she hears Devasena hiss _It’s about appearances_ , a little too loudly as they leave, then that is a secret for the walls and her wine cup -- not even the Goddess would begrudge her some alcohol today.

******

The Wedding will take place in one month. Devasena has lived with Sivagami for three days. Time has ceased to have meaning, so Sivagami is unsure which unit truly feels longer.

Devasena nominally occupies the room next to Sivagami’s late in the evenings and arises early with the sun. True to her word there is no talk of impropriety, no scandal about the pair disappearing at inopportune times only to be found disheveled and wearing the wrong upper garment. The pair is often seen with Kattapa, who Sivagami must speak to regarding the disaster he allowed to happen under his watch: she knows that Baahu has found a father in the general but she had never expected such leniency and disregard for Sivagami rights as mother and regent to witness her own son’s wedding ceremony. Of course, had the pair not been married Sivagami would have had to give the girl to Bhalla as per her promise, but still. It is the feeling of it all that rankles at Sivagami’s soul.

To be sure Baahu seems almost sickeningly happy and Sivagami does not believe she can tire of seeing him smile so brightly at all he encounters. Bhalla too seems unconcerned by the loss of what he had termed the love of his life, and Sivagami is heartened by such a display of brotherly affection, so strong even in the face of loss. She has assured him his pick of the region’s finest women, and a section of Kattapa’s elite warriors to begin training as he chooses.

But Devasena -- she is the woman Sivagami’s errant thoughts come back to, time and time again. Devasena, who does not carry a small knife but a swinging sword, whose arms bear the scars of countless bow-strings. Sivagami enquires after the latest ones that still seem to be healing and is informed that there was a war, one that was won by the efforts of her Baahu who brought down a dam and converted a valley into a moat. Typical. 

“He taught me how to shoot three arrows at a time while we were shooting at the Pindari in a hallway,” Devasena says with satisfaction while tearing apart her morning dosa. “That was the moment when he revealed he was more than a village idiot. Not that I hadn’t already guessed.”

Sivagami feels faint at this tale of romance, itself almost a proposal for her Baahu of action over words. She remembers how long it had taken Baahu to perfect that particular trick, how he had refused to teach anyone beyond Kattapa how to master the art -- Kattapa and Devasena, she corrects, mechanically finishing her own dosa before excusing herself for the day’s work.

Sivagami’s mornings are full of plans both for the wedding as well as the coronation; as the Royal Family’s regent and sole female representative it falls on her to be heavily involved in the planning of both. Sivagami, who has sat over war plans, finds herself out of depth when faced with the differences in flower garlands to be strung above the wedding platform. She calls in Devasena to describe the Kuntalan ceremony in the hopes that it will provide inspiration, but her daughter in law flushes for some reason, saying that the ceremony had been simple to accommodate her personal taste.

“But the flowers,” Sivagami asks, “do you remember what type they had been?”

Devasena shakes her head, still so frustratingly confident when Sivagami herself had quaked before her own mother in law the former Queen. “To be honest, I remember very little beyond the face of my husband that day. My sari was white, and my husband wore blue.”

 _Every bride’s sari is white_ , Sivagami wants to scream, but simply dismisses her daughter in law and secretly pours herself another glass of wine. “I remember very little beyond the face of my husband that day,” Sivagami mimics softly before taking another swallow. She is not jealous, she tells herself, except that she is -- Sivagami can recall a great many details of her wedding day because she spent much of it avoiding the face of her husband, who had proved himself very wealthy, titled, and cruel in the single meeting they had before the ceremony.

“Mother,” her second son comes bounding into her quarters, as has been reported he enters all rooms nowadays. “Devasena says you are asking of our wedding ceremony! I of course remember every detail of the happiest day of my entire life, barring perhaps the second time I am wed to my love! If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them!.”

Sivagami absorbs this speech with what she considers a great amount of calm and collection. Her valiant son: a warrior, a scholar, an Emperor in one month’s time bounding star-eyed into her room to help plan his own wedding. His second wedding, at that, to the same woman.

“Ah,” she says, and in a moment of what she knows is pure cowardice, begs off due to a headache.

******

“And how does the mountain bitch fare today,” Sivagami’s husband snarls on the one day per week they share a morning meal.

Sivagami, who has had reports that Baahu had his bride fitted for personal arm cuffs and a full suit of armor, swallows. “Well, I believe.” She takes a sip of the wine Bijaladeva has at his table at all times of day, for once glad of his decree that she partake when she is with him, so as to not make him feel inferior by her abstinence.

“I have heard that she conducts herself in a manner not befitting a woman,” he says. So he too has heard about the armor.

“Then you will have also heard that she was without mother and father at a formative time in her life.” She does not say that Baahu too had turned to weapons when confronted with his orphan status, that it shocks Sivagami very little that his chosen would react to a shared pain in the same way. Instead: “The Goddess herself is adept in all weapons.”

“Again you compare her to the Goddess,” Bijaladeva says, “forgetting that the Gods can comport themselves in all manners unsuitable for the mortal.”

“It is not inappropriate for female royalty to know the ways of weapons,” Sivagami attempts to say, knowing that her own use of a knife is a point of contention between them.

“Yes,” he says, “it is.” He takes a sip. “The ministers have begun to wonder at their lack of introduction to the woman that is to be their new queen. They mention that they have seen more of our son Bhalla than of the ones supposedly meant for the crown.”

Sivagami sighs. Baahu has always spent more time with the army, but her husband is right -- the throne requires more than military acumen, which is why she had declared it for Baahu in the first place.

“Of course,” she says and smiles. “The couple have made themselves scarce on my orders as I required a few days to set some affairs in order. You may tell the ministers that I will be personally introducing them to the court today, during the afternoon session.”

She stands. “Thank you, as always, for your scintillating presence this morning my husband. I look forward to meeting you this time next week.”

As she walks back, Sivagami calls for a servant: “Find me my son Baahubali,” she says, voice strong and certain. “And his ...” she pauses. “Devasena,” she says after some consideration because in Mahishmati the woman is and is not Baahu’s wife all at once. “Find me Devasena as well.”

******

The introductions, as Sivagami should have predicted, are disastrous.

When pondering the question of whom Baahu’s wife might be, Sivagami had thought on the traits her boy embodied and came up with a list: bravery, intelligence, kindness each had their place near the top, but Sivagami was also a regent and so she listed in small letters the most glaring of her son’s faults: very poor at politics.

17 years ago Sivagami had introduced each of her sons to the ministers and governors of Mahishmati, certain that one of the two boys would one day sit at their head and guide the Empire into a new dawn. Her son Bhalla had taken to them immediately, instinctively knowing whom to speak to, whom to cajole, whom to simply nod and meet later in private to discuss affairs of state. Within 30 minutes each had felt that he alone had formed a mentorship with the elder prince, and Sivagami had watched with pride as her child held Mahishmati’s most powerful men like sugar candy in the palm of his hand.

Baahu, she found in the corner with the minister she best liked, speaking urgently of the types of machines that could possibly be used to improve harvests in times of drought. Smiling gently she tried to pull him away, suggesting that he improve his rapport with the other ministers who might not be so forgiving of a snub in the future.

“But I don’t like them,” Baahu had said. “They’re stupid, and they think I’m stupid too.”

This, he said, at the type of booming volume only children can manage at the most inopportune times, ending the visit quite abruptly, and coloring Baahu’s dealings with his future court ever since.

Sivagami had assumed that she would find a wife that could play the game of politics in Baahu’s stead, who could manage the privileged and pompous while Baahu changed the world. But now Baahu has chosen to fall in love.

Sivagami dismisses all servants when she enters her chambers. When she is satisfied that she will not be overheard, she turns to face her son.

“Well,” he says with a smile. “That went as well as I could have hoped.”

Sivagami turns to face her son’s Devasena. “And how do you rank your performance?”

Devasena straightens her shoulders. “It did not come to blows.”

“No,” Sivagami concedes, “it did not. You are fortunate that Minister Nagraj did not understand the veiled insinuations you made regarding his ability to satisfy women.”

“I do not apologize for my own observations -- the man flashes his wealth for a reason.”

Sivagami sighs. “Baahu,” she begins but stops when she realizes that she does not know what to say. “Baahu you are dismissed.”

Baahu, viper in Sivagami’s bosom that he has become, looks first to his wife who shrugs.

“Mother,” he says, and to his credit, his tone is really quite delicate. “Would it not be best that I remain here whilst you speak to my beloved wife?”

“No,” Sivagami says simply, “it would not.”

“I’ll live,” Devasena says quietly, smiling when Baahu kisses her forehead after taking Sivagami’s blessing to exit the room.

“Survived the Pindari only to pass at my mother’s hand,” Baahu calls out over his shoulder. “That would be a poor death indeed.”

“Well,” Sivagami says, not yet too poor a mother to take pleasure in her son’s obvious joy. “Well.”

“I suppose you mean to lambast my poor political acumen away from the protection of my husband?” Devasena stands far looser in limb that Sivagami deems appropriate for such a setting, but this too Sivagami has seen in the bodies of men who wear insolence to hide their fear.

“I do not,” Sivagami says, and takes a seat pretending not to enjoy the shock that paints her daughter in law’s features. “Sit,” she commands. Devasena sits.

“My son,” Sivagami begins, “your husband.” Devasena nods. “He is, of course, a great man -- the embodiment of nobility, of courage, of compassion, and possesses one of the keenest intellects the royal line has seen in generations.”

“Yes,” Devasena says with an air of the obivous. “You’ll notice I married him.”

Sivagami nods. The girl, whatever her many, many flaws, cannot be faulted for her taste. Baahu, on the other hand... “My son does not easily suffer fools,” Sivagami says baldly, “and the Mahishmati court is comprised almost entirely of idiots.”

Devasena looks thoughtful for a moment. “Actually, he handled my brother in law quite well -- reformed him entirely to be honest. I would almost call it a public service considering Kumar is the one who took my place when I abdicated my right to the Kuntalan throne.”

Interesting, but Sivagami puts that aside in favor of the raw evidence of today’s usual lackluster performance in the throne room. “Since he was a boy, my son has only ever favored the three old ministers who supported the throne at the time of my ascension as Regent. Kattapa killed the others of course, but the positions are hereditary, and tied to the smaller royal land claims that together form our central kingdom.”

“So the traitors have been replaced by their sons.”

“Or their brothers,” Sivagami replies, “uncles, cousins, the closest man who could claim a direct tie to the seat. The Culling changed the political landscape of Mahishmati drastically, replacing men with experience in their positions with those who had not expected to find themselves near the throne room. They are...” Sivagami pauses, thinking about how best to put this. “They are still insecure.”

“Interesting,” Devasena says. “These would be the type of men to wear thirty different necklaces and carry three types of dagger at his waist, I assume.”

“Nagraj was the youngest of seven and the only remaining male of any age to assume the role when his nephew revolted, yes. But that is not the point.”

“The point,” Devasena interrupts cheeks starting to flush, “is that my husband does not care for politics, and you believe that his wife should be the type who massages the egos that he thoughtlessly crushes.” Sivagami watches her daughter in law swallow. “If you will pardon my insolence, I wonder why you would pick a man who does not care for the particulars of ruling to be king.”

This is not a question Sivagami expected. “Do you not wish to be Empress?”

“No,” Devasena says. “I did not lie in your throne room - I accepted his offer of marriage before knowing his status. In truth, I believe I would have preferred him to be no more than a warrior.”

Sivagami catches herself before she smiles, remaining silent in order to coax Devasena into continuing.

“Kuntala tradition states that the child best suited to the throne shall ascend regardless of age or gender: I was not that child. To be an Empress,” Devasena looks away. “To be an Empress suits me not at all.”

Honesty, at least, and Sivagami finds herself admiring the girl for it once more. She rewards this admission with one of her own. “My son Bhalla has always found the daily routine of court more to his liking, but I could not crown a man who found it so easy to sacrifice his subjects in pursuit of the throne.”

She pauses, swallowing hard as she always does when thinking of the ease with which the child of her womb plowed through his own screaming citizens.

“War is sacrifice,” Devasena responds carefully. “My brother in law’s decision on the battlefield was not unique. ” It seems she too has heard of the choices each of Sivagami’s son’s made when faced with human shields.

“It was not,” Sivagami agrees, “but even if Baahu could not save them, he would have remembered. Generals perhaps can afford to forget the human cost of victory, but I would not have a king who could so easily abandon the victims of his decisions.” Not if there was another option, at least. 

Devasena sighs for a moment, breaking her gaze with Sivagami. A minute passes, then another, then one more before Devasena speaks again. Her voice is soft, plaintive even, which was a quality that Sivagami did not know could be found in the body of one such as her daughter in law.

“But will he be _happy_ ,” Devasena asks, and Sivagami who is rarely given to flights of fancy imagines for a moment that she could warm her hands in front of the fire of this great love. She smiles.

“I'd suggest you ask.”

 

******

In the morning, servants report that Devasena is missing from her bed and Sivagami does not need to ask to know the state of her second son.

“Missing as well,” one particularly brave servant-slave reports, and Sivagami takes note to provide her with some sort of reward -- a pearl necklace would suffice if Sivagami were the type of woman to wear one.

There are many possible reactions Sivagami contemplates displaying: anger, frustration, resignation, laughter. In acknowledgment of each of these deeply held emotions, she orders for the largest wineskin that can be found in Mahishmati’s cellars, and a glass to suit the task of superseding her husband’s title as the empire’s earliest lush. It is with fondness that she remembers the days when entire months could pass without a sip. 

There is a full week with no word from the erstwhile future Emperor nor his beloved but Sivagami, steadied by three glasses a day stands firm. Baahu has always been in and out of the capital city in disguise or not; his absence from court is noted in the same way that it always has been and Bhalla manages in his brother’s stead. Devasena, Sivagami says, is experiencing the indignity of her monthlies.

On the eighth day, Sivagami walks into her dining room and stops, staring for more than is dignified at the sight presented to her at the table. Devasena wearing bright red silk sits as if she had not thrown Sivagami’s life into the greatest turmoil seen since Baahu’s orphaning, eating an idli with a type of calm military precision Sivagami admires despite her all-encompassing rage.

“Well,” Sivagami says, controlling herself enough to only raise an imperious eyebrow. She checks the jug placed firmly in the center of the morning’s dishes and is relieved to only see nothing more than the river water she usually drinks when not reduced to covering for her son’s escapades weeks prior to his crowning. She has a reputation to maintain.  

“Yes,” is all Devasena deigns to say, showing an extraordinary interest in the shape and quality of the new idli she is plucking from its serving plate.

The meal passes longer than the entire 25 past years combined, and when Sivagami finds the vessel of chutney empty before she has finished her last idli she spends a quiet moment dreaming of demanding an answer, any type of answer, from a Devasena under the full duress of the palace dungeon.

More chutney is found, and the silence continues.

Devasena will not be Empress, Sivagami thinks, but neither will she leave Baahubali. The thought of the pair sitting on the throne sets Sivagami sweating as she imagines the secession of the entire set of governors, Mahishmati embroiled in war after civil war, the coffers empty, the public dying.

Sivagami lifts her cup and drinks, violently draining every last drop of water before setting it gently back on the table. A thought occurs to her, one so immediately terrifying that she finds she cannot stay in the room, in the presence of this ..... of this _harridan_ to imagine the consequences. Sivagami had assumed that when confronted Baahu would convince his wife to seek the crown, that his love for Mahishmati was greater, purer, stronger than any earthly romance no matter how true. But perhaps she has been mistaken in all this time of the quality of her son’s heart: perhaps, in the eight days they have been gone, Devasena has convinced Baahu to abdicate his seat. Baahu, a servant announces, has asked to meet his mother in private one hour after the morning meal. Is this what he wishes to announce? Disaster.

 _Do you not apologize_ , she wants to ask, and whether it is for the week Devasena spent away or for the easy abandonment of all Sivagami has worked for she does not know. But just as Sivagami is about to leave the apartments and demand the empire’s second strongest spirit (having already consumed the first) she hears a voice so quiet and lacking in natural arrogance that she believes it to be nothing more than the ritual leave-taking of her servants.

“Queen Mother,” she hears then, the same voice lined suddenly with steel. “An acknowledgment would be appreciated before you left the room.”

Sivagami turns, taken aback. “What?”

Devasena’s brow furrows and startlingly the woman seems to be blushing furiously as she glares at the ground. “I asked for an audience with you at a time that is convenient, in order to prepare me for the role that awaits me.”

“The role,” Sivagami repeats carefully, reduced to half sentences as she wrathfully crushes the hope that blooms for a moment inside the bottom of her heart. The role of a General’s wife, perhaps, or worse.

“Yes Queen Mother,” Devasena responds with impatience, but even then, even when having admitted that she would not suit a crown Sivagami does not see her daughter in law falter. “My role as Empress of Mahishmati.”

Every disaster scenario Sivagami had created cracks, shatters like so much glass following this revelation. Her mind goes totally, utterly, infuriatingly blank.

“Oh,” Sivagami says. Later she will regret that she could not be more formal, more dignified in a moment of such import, but she finds there is nothing else she could possibly say. “Well alright then.”

******

At noon Sivagami begins her first lesson, a deconstruction of a very basic legal commentary she had introduced to her sons at the age of 10.

“Oh,” Devasena says when she glances at the scroll Sivagami hands her. "I have already read this.” She looks slightly embarrassed. “In Kuntala this is introduced at the age of 10, I believe.”

Sivagami wishes for a moment that she had thought to schedule the lessons later in the evening when the presence of alcohol could be considered a casual display of wealth rather than a marker of deviancy.

“Good,” she says instead, “then what were your thoughts?” The author is, of course, a well regarded and ancient philosopher whose words a younger Sivagami had kept quite close to her heart. She has since, in the years of her experience come to discover her own quibbles with some interpretations, but still, it is one that she finds has served as a strong foundation.

“I think it’s rubbish, of course.”

Of course. Sivagami pauses for a moment, remembers the warmth that had swelled when she first beheld the infant Baahu, her numerous oaths to love and protect him and all that he valued with her very life. She opens her mouth.

“Ah,” Sivagami says, and then she falls silent. Devasena, future Empress and daughter-in-law that she is, rolls her eyes.

“The social structure it suggests as it’s ideal is simplistic and relies too much on the participation of intermediaries. I find it foolish to delegate so much power to individual governors so that they, in turn, may exploit those who have the misfortune to live on their lands.”

Sivagami raises an eyebrow. She finds that she does not quite disagree, and that itself is a cause for celebration in this brave new world. “So you are in favor of a stronger throne?”

Devasena smirks. “I’m not so sure that I am in favor of a throne at all. Who knows what Kuntala might have been had I been my mother’s only child.”

“You are not taking this seriously,” Sivagami says, stung to the quick at Devasena’s ease in belittling the gravity of the conversation. The direction in which Baahu chooses to consolidate or dilute his royal authority will have grave effects for the future of Mahishmati. She watches Devasena close her eyes and sigh.

“I am, Queen Mother, I apologize.” She opens her eyes looks down for a brief moment, hand grasping blindly at the side table for what turns out to be a glass of water. “Still, knowing that Mahishmati’s Court is no wiser than Kuntala’s does not make me consider the treatise in any more positive of a light than I had before.”

“Hmph,” Sivagami says, sipping at her own water glass with some interest in where the girl will take this argument. “And I suppose you have thought of a far better system instead.”

“Of course,” Devasena smiles, “and it is quite simple.” Sivagami nods.

“Our royal families are considered the font of dharma, born to be so by the merit of past lives,” Devasena says in what Sivagami considers a non-sequitur. “And it is because of that that our kings are granted such power to affect the lives of those they rule. They, beyond any power outside that of the gods themselves, decide what is right and what is wrong. To allow those acting on the Sovereign’s authority to abuse this power is, I believe, an injustice.”

“Do you believe that there is such abuse?” Sivagami asks faintly, automatically because it is expected of her in order to keep Devasena speaking. For all that Sivagami knows of the incompetence of Mahishmati’s ruling court she finds that her mind is suddenly clouded, a sharp pain somewhere that she cannot soothe. She is strong, confident, a ruler of men for 25 years but something has made her feel small. She does not dissagree, she cannot given her own experience, but the more she thinks the more it feels that her thoughts rise from what must be the bottom of a very deep well. There is a farness to the space that surrounds her, a sense that this world she lives in cannot quite be real. An echo, she thinks, but of what? From where? She racks her mind, once, twice, but the thought that rises is not what she seeks.

 _Mahishmati’s governors_ are _royal_ , Sivagami thinks randomly, _they simply answer to a higher claim_. But before she can say as much Devasena answers the question Sivagami can barely recall asking moments before:

“Yes,” Devasena says, with such a roughness to her voice that Sivagami is startled briefly away from her pondering. “Too many kingdoms allow authority to those who were not born to wield it -- Kings lay stagnant amidst bottles of wine and in the company of pleasure women having abandoned the duties that come with their privilege. It is only natural that those who find themselves newly in power will use it poorly, to line their pockets while our people go hungry.”

 _Oh_ , Sivagami thinks, and then she remembers .

 _Mahishmati’s governors are royal,_ Sivagami remembers, _But I_ \--

And then, Sivagami stands, and she walks out of the room.

******

Sivagami was 25 years old the day before what people will later call The Culling: a mother just recently delivered of her son, supposedly queen regent for the three months between her brother in law’s passing and the end of her sister in law’s confinement. And yet the Empress still labored, a full day and a dark, moonless night after her pangs had begun. Nursemaids had begun to pray only for the life of the child and that death may come as a relief to the woman whose voice had begun to give out from the strength of her shrieks.

Kattapa had sent a message, fetching Sivagami from the room she had sequestered herself with Bhalla and asked if she would accompany him into what she realized was a hidden closet, built into the walls of one of the private rooms Mahishmati’s governors sought the use of when they met outside the purview of their king.

“We are men,” she had heard Martand, governor of one of the oldest and substantial areas that made up Mahishmati, scream. “Men of power, men of substance! Men who each lay claim to the land which we are born to rule.”

“Yes,” his following replied as one, what sounded like every one of the empire’s ministers. Sivagami’s heart sank but she concentrated if only to know the circumstances of her coming execution. Kattapa she knew stood beside her, stock still and so silent that had she not watched him enter before her she would not know he was there.

“We are men,” Martand had said, “who only swear fealty to those of a higher birth and standing than our own. Our king was of good stock, and so we knelt. His father, and his father before him too showed courage enough to lead, and intelligence to marry the women of the land’s highest house, and so our own forefathers knelt.”

He spat, and Sivagami, hidden as she was, felt herself flinch. “But now,” his voice lowered, “The Empress is as good as dead, and the woman whose authority we tolerated in the place of her sister the Queen will be the only member of the royal family eligible to stand as regent for the babe." His voice now rose once more. “The throne will stand defiled by a woman of no breeding, of no blood, of no qualities that would have her stand apart from us outside of the marriage her father arranged on her behalf.”

“What of the whelps?” someone called out. “The first is hers and so defiled by the association, but the second?”

“The second will die before it exits its mother’s womb,” Martand had said easily, and indeed that was a truth that everyone, even Sivagami assumed would come to pass. Despite her prayers, she had never known a birth of such agony to succeed. “Under these circumstances, I would say that it is, in fact, our sacred duty to assume the authority of the throne before it can be stained by the character of a woman who does not know her place.”

 _Bhalla_ , she thought wildly, before remembering that he was safe in the arms of Sivagami’s own childhood nurse. But then what did safety mean when she and her son would be dead within hours of the Empress’ passing.

“Too many kingdoms have found themselves bent to the wills of those who should never have grasped the reins of power,” Martand called out, “It is only natural that those who find themselves from families unused to power will use it poorly, that this bitch will only ever line her pockets as our people go hungry. Each of us comes from proud royal families, born to bloodlines that have sat on thrones for generations, that know what it means to defend, to make decisions on the behalf of those who pay us tribute. This imposter knows nothing more than the filth of trade, whether it be spices, gold, or even _herself_.”

The room could not contain the utter delight that the aspersions against Sivagami’s honor raised amongst these men. Sivagami, who was certain she would die, thought that it might not be so terrible if she could take at least one of these men down when she fell. A simple slit of the throat before she bled out, perhaps.

“Tomorrow,” Martand shouted, “I, a member of those whom the Great God himself has ordained will claim my sacred inheritance. I ask: will you stand with me?”

“Yes,” Sivagami heard the room say as one, sealing their fate once and for all. “We will!”

******

“Mother,” Baahu says walking unannounced into Sivagami’s bedroom. “Mother, what on earth did you say to my wife?”

 _I_ , Sivagami wants to erupt, what did _I_ say to _your_ wife? But then she thinks of how her son has changed since his marriage, how happy he is with his Devasena, and takes a sip of what she believes is her fourth serving of wine since she had walked in and demanded a cup, a wineskin and the dispersal of every single individual in her general vicinity.

Thoughtless, because the one thing she values beyond her privacy at times like this is the surety of knowing that her sons will not see. Baahu, in particular, has not found her husband’s habits easy, and so Sivagami has always taken care to ensure that he is kept occupied during her moments of despair.

Another thing she can blame on Devasena, even as Sivagami knows this is no one’s fault but her own. She can only hope that her reaction to alcohol is different enough from her husband’s easy wrath that Baahu might not even notice.

“Did you know,” she says instead: softly, loosely, “that you were not supposed to live?”

Baahu, her beloved, beautiful boy, looks confused. A sober Sivagami would not have begun that way, she knows, but drink has always encouraged her sense of dramatic timing. The poor thing is caught, she supposes, between the fact that Sivagami’s husband who hates him has probably said many such things to him in the past, and the fact that Sivagami herself loves Baahu to the point of distraction.

This is the first time she has seen him any less than ecstatic since his marriage, and Sivagami regrets that she must be the reason for this painful return to the domain of men.

“We prayed, of course, but your mother was in such pain,” Sivagami, her mind full of her plans to deflect a coup had been glad for the excuse to sit with Kattapa and bribe her supposed assassins far away from the women’s quarters, when before she had only been able to sit with her baby and wait for the poor woman to die. “None of us, not even the oldest of the midwives had never known a child of such a birth to survive.”

“But you did,” Sivagami says, caught for a moment remembering the joy of that first meeting, of stroking Baahu’s tiny face, of his hand grasping at her fingers, and then she remembers what happened next. “Just by that you destroyed the very foundation of Martand’s claim.”

“Martand?” Sivagami smiles faintly at the signs of her son’s confusion. At some point, while she was speaking he must have passed his hand through his hair. “You spoke of _Martand_?”

A fair point, considering Sivagami's habit of never letting the traitor's name pass her lips. But she continues, choosing to ignore this interjection. “It took your mother almost two full days to deliver you. By the end of the first we all knew she would die. Kattapa and I spied Martand speaking to the assembled governors and claimed that the legitimacy of our royal throne lay in our blood, that our family’s rule represented the qualities of courage, intelligence, and skill passed through generations of royalty on both sides.”

Her Baahu, truly in the manner of those royal ancestors Martand had claimed to honor so, has always been brilliant.

“I was born to a King and his Queen, who herself was born a princess,” he says, and Sivagami nods, the wine softening her nerves to the point that even this, the conversation she has never been able to have with her children, is easy. “Bhalla was not.”

“No,” she nods again, “Bhalla was not.”

Baahu looks away, shoulders straightening until Sivagami feels that he must be more stone than man. If she could rise she thinks she would, to straighten his hair and smooth the wrinkles that have formed on his brow, but she knows she will be unsteady and that would only serve to make Baahu more distraught. “Is that why you chose me,” he asks, “because of my _blood_?”

He speaks without inflection until the last, spits the word blood as if even the thought of it is like poison. Sivagami feels the numbness that has pervaded her body since she left Devasena subside a little. “No,” she laughs, and she knows the sound must have become rare by the way Baahu whips from glaring at the walls to gaze at her once more. “The ministers and governors today are too terrified of Kattapa’s sword to speak against me, and even if they weren’t they dislike you enough to prefer Bhalla despite his mother’s ancestry.”

“But the ministers then,” she says, and sighs. “They did not know that you had lived. If they had, then perhaps they might not have--”

“Uncle told me once what he heard that night,” Baahu interrupts once more, and she knows that the Uncle he speaks of is not her husband. “They would have killed you and my brother Bhalla for nothing more than blood, when you of all eligible for the throne have ruled with the most intelligence, strength, and compassion.” He pauses, and Sivagami is grateful that Kattapa seems not to have passed down the other things those men had said, for if he had then she believes that not even those governors' sons would sit on the thrones of their fathers. “I have always believed that they would have killed me too.”

“I did not have to insist on my regency,” Sivagami says, thinking back to what Devasena had said about how the gods themselves ordained kings as the font of dharma on earth, how easy it had been to order their massacre, to bribe their soldiers to spill their blood on the steps of the throne room. “I could have had the Prime Minister take the throne in your stead, had you crowned by the age of your majority.”

They would have agreed, she knows, because her Baahu was of royal blood on both sides and infants had sat as Emperor before. But Sivagami was greedy, and she was proud. Three months of her own rule had convinced her that the empire could not survive a foolish rule by committee, but more: it had convinced her that she alone could do better.   

Sivagami swallows, eyes glazing as she remembers the bodies, the weeping families of the next day, the way crowds silenced themselves before Sivagami who had culled the heads of 15 ruling families for her own righteous indignation. “They were of royal blood, each of them, and I had them all killed because they would not kneel before me.”

“They were never anything more than traitors,” she hears, the voice as hard and brutal as the crack of a whip. When she refocuses she realizes that her son Baahubali, so much like his mother Sivagami, has walked out.

She pours herself another cup and drinks.

******

In the morning Sivagami rises with a massive headache and tries to remember the events that had led to this particular indignity. Baahu, she thinks of first, and then with a more sour tone, _Devasena_.

The light of a new day does little more than embarrass Sivagami: wise Queen Mother, Regent, coward who preferred to run and hide and drink than defend herself against a girl who, truthfully, did not say anything Sivagami herself had not heard. Truthfully, Sivagami herself had often parroted the same argument claiming that each of her children had royal blood, that each of them would have the same royal upbringing, that the nation themselves would test her son’s skills and determine the best of her two sons.

Sivagami’s reign rests, for all that she is not royal herself, on the royalty of her sons. She knows this. She does. 

Sivagami will have to apologize. She rises, accepting the headache as a punishment for her childishness and performs her morning ablutions. Devasena, if Sivagami is lucky, will have skipped the morning meal to avoid Sivagami’s presence.

Sivagami is not lucky, and so when a servant finishes tying her hair she walks out of her room to see Devasena sitting at the breakfast table, eating an appam seemingly without a care in the world.

Only true royal blood, Sivagami realizes with a flash, can ever be so comfortable in such situations. Devasena, who has always known her place in the world sits easy, a simple explanation for her command during all those times Sivagami had known herself to quake. Sivagami the Usurper forces herself to ignore her sense of unease and sits, finishing three appams across from her daughter in law before either of them speak.

“Queen Mother,” Devasena calls out, just as Sivagami reaches for the rinsing bowl, “my husband and I had an interesting conversation last night.”

“Indeed,” is all Sivagami can manage. Baahu had stormed out with quite a sense of vigor, but whether the anger was for Sivagami, for Devasena, or for himself she could not tell.

“Oh yes,” Devasena says with what Sivagami is surprised to identify as levity. “He accused me of quite a many things, and our conversation lasted far into the night.” Sivagami tries not to feel pleasure at hearing this, fails, and then tries at least not to show it.

“How unfortunate,” is all she will allow. For some reason, it feels as if Devasena is looking at her with a new light, and Sivagami is put in the uncomfortable position of seeming to be understood by someone she finds incomprehensible.

“You will be interested in his strong defense of yourself,” Devasena says, calm, amused even at this narration of what must have been a harrowing argument. “He listed your many fine qualities and the way in which you had brought him up in ways greater than even, as he termed it ‘the Queen who birthed me.’”

Devasena is right: Sivagami is interested. “It is always good to know of one’s children’s fondness,” she says lightly. Her headache, miraculously, is receding.

“Of course,” Devasena says. “Then, once he finished, he accused me of disrespecting your sacred person, and then of questioning your legitimacy to serve as Queen Mother.” She pauses, delicately, as Sivagami winces.

 _Sacred person_ , she finds herself mouthing before she can mute her reaction, but Devasena only looks amused. Sivagami had not realized that her son was capable of such erudition.

“He walked away before I could explain,” Sivagami says, apology creeping into her tone despite her efforts, but then realizes the trap --

“Then I find the son to be very much like the mother,” Devasena says, half acerbic and half triumphant. She stands, ushering Sivagami into Sivagami's own sitting room. Sivagami’s headache comes roaring back to life. “Would you care for a glass of wine?”

******

“In the morning?” Sivagami asks, deliberately quashing the irony of she asking such a question considering her performance this last week. But then the last thing she expected from Baahu’s wife was an alcoholic.

“Amongst many other accusations, last night my husband accused me of driving his beloved mother to drink,” Devasena says, tone dry as famine fields. She arranges herself amongst the cushions Sivagami keeps for her most valued guests. “I feel like I might return the favor.”

“My husband,” Sivagami attempts to explain with some chagrin, but it seems Devasena is already aware. Then again, so is half of the capital city, so that in of itself is not extraordinary. She too leans back in the chair that she had commissioned for her aching joints.

“I assume,” Devasena says, “that your husband’s proclivities are why my own seems personally opposed to even the sight of liquor at his evening table.”

“He does not drink if he can help it,” Sivagami says, thinking of how Baahu's cups at state events are still full past dessert. “And until last night I had never allowed him to see me in such a state.”

“But you do,” Devasena says with a raised eyebrow, “drink, I mean.”

Sivagami rolls her eyes. “Half of my Court lives _because_ I drink,” she says.

Devasena smiles, and a wineskin arrives next to two clay cups.

“I hoped he hadn’t noticed,” Sivagami admits, grimacing at Devasena’s sharp laugh.

“He did,” is all she will say, before changing the topic once more.

“My mother was the Kuntalan sovereign.” she begins, and Sivagami does not sense that this will be a short interview. “When I was five years old, she died. My father had passed one year earlier.”

“My condolences,” Sivagami says automatically, still confused at how she had so quickly lost control of her morning. How quickly, in fact, she seems to have lost control over her life.

“Thank you,” Devasena says. “My brother and I, like I have mentioned before, were both equally eligible for the throne, but it was determined that when he reached the age of majority at 13 he would be crowned. If I, when I reached the same age was seen to be a better candidate he would abdicate, taking up the position as General if he so chose.”

Interesting, but Sivagami does not understand how this history is altogether pertinent to her own poor showing the day before.

“Kuntala was ruled until then by regent,” Devasena says calmly, so calm in fact that Sivagami is certain that this must be a subject that boils her blood. She straightens, paying as much attention as her headache will allow. Devasena pours them each a glass and motions for Sivagami to sip as if Devasena were the wise matron of 50 summers. Devasena herself, Sivagami notices with some amusement, drains her cup immediately.

“Kuntala was ruled by regent,” she says, “and almost destroyed.” Sivagami breathes in sharply, and Devasena’s smile is bitter. “For generations, our royal family had ruled alongside the strength of our court, but during the brief vacuum of power each Minister that stood on our ruling committee clamored for power, issuing contradicting orders, growing and shrinking our army while raising taxes that never seemed to go towards the building of roads or shelters.”

Sivagami begins to see the motivations behind Devasena’s ruling philosophy. Devasena pours herself another cup and this time when she drinks she only finishes half.

“My brother and I were young,” Devasena continues, “shunted from the corners of our palace to royal dwellings along the outskirts of our nation, kept away from the centers of power and from the sight of our own people, for whom the memory of our Mother began to dim. My brother turned 13, but no one expected that we would return to claim the throne. Ministers offered to rule in his stead until he reached 18, and then perhaps until 21. Their messengers did not even wait for our reply.”

Sivagami, who knows so little of Kuntala, at least knows this. When Jayasena turned 13 he ascended the Kuntalan throne. Her only contact prior to meeting its finest daughter had been receiving a diplomat who had invited her to attend the ceremony -- she had passed her congratulations and sent a fine shawl in her place.

“We refused,” Devasena says, “and when we confronted them they realized that our Mother’s legacy had not yet passed that they could depose her children without an uprising. So our Ministers grudgingly retook the positions they had held under our Mother the Sovereign, expecting that, when confronted with the disaster they had made of our nation we would fail.”

“Did it?” Sivagami asks, engrossed despite herself in this story of children who took on such responsibility so young. Sivagami had been 25, a mother even, for all that she was ill prepared for the task at hand.

“My brother showed a talent for administration,” Devasena says with relish, “and I, at routing the bandits which had taken advantage of our minister’s negligence of our borders and plundered the poor of our countryside, every year coming closer and closer to the capital.”

“The Pindari,” Sivagami says with some sympathy. Kattapa had mentioned that Baahu, when confronted with the way those particular bandits drowned their victims, had been shaken to the core. She will not ask, but she knows that her son would have broken the Kuntalan dam for more reasons than expediency.

“Among others,” Devasena says shortly. “My brother, like our mother before us, like her father, like his, like his mother, knew not only the privileges of the throne but the responsibility. Even at 13 he was able to rule more effectively than men thrice his age, to see our needs, our desires, and our future with clarity.” Her voice when speaking of her brother gains fervor and passion, and here, Sivagami knows is the true source of Devasena’s immeasurable self-belief: a gamble, much like Sivagami's had been thrown, and these children had won. “How could we not believe that was due to our blood?” Devasena’s voice is plaintive, and with a jolt Sivagami realizes what she should have seen from the start.

They were children, and like children they believed in a fantasy -- a prince and a princess, orphaned early and abandoned, brought up to believe that one day they would reclaim their birthright. She looks at Devasena, who even now is two years younger than Sivagami had been the year she assumed her regency. A girl, even more for the straight blouses she insists on wearing prematurely. Only the very young have ever sought to speed up the natural progression of time. 

Sivagami takes a drink. “Mahishmati’s ministers are royal,” Sivagami offers in trade, the words coming easier than they ever have before, “I am not. I killed Martand and 15 other royal families because they would not kneel before a Queen Mother who had once been the daughter of a merchant.”

Sivagami begins to the see the appeal of her husband’s constant state of drunken debauchery and subsequently his complete forthrightness regardless of consequence.

Devasena too takes a sip. “Last night my husband accused me of bigotry, shouted for quite some time that his citizens were equal despite their birth. At one point I was quite afraid that he would bring in a servant and cut both her arm and his in service of an extended metaphor about the color of our blood.”

Sivagami thinks of putting her head in her hands, and then the next moment finds that she actually has. Her dear, dramatic son.

“The story of Sivagami Devi’s triumphant rule, a woman amongst a field of dead men, reached even my ears,” Sivagami hears from behind the hands covering her face, and she is not surprised: success was only ever a matter of survival after all. Devasena seems apologetic. “I must have seemed quite cruel yesterday.”

“You could not know,” Sivagami replies, and for once she feels the comfort of these words, along with a sudden exhaustion. This is the way of the world, she knows, for girls like Devasena to only know half-truths, to hear of the woman but not the family of her birth. “You are young, yet.”

“It was arrogance,” Devasena says with a touch of heat. When Sivagami finally looks up it is to see Devasena mulishly glaring at her own cup, toe rubbing against the grain of Sivagami’s favorite carpet. “It _is_ arrogance to believe that only those born by chance have the innate qualities necessary to lead. Baahu said as much last night.”

“Apparently Baahu said a great many things,” Sivagami says quietly, surprised as always at the kindness she finds in her son. Sivagami herself has always leaned towards mercy. “In this respect, you will find that your views are far more common than his."

Devasena stands, fury, excitement, passion evident in every line of her body. “And if I don’t want to be common?”

“You are royal,” Sivagami replies, but not without humor, “there was never any danger of that.” 

She watches Devasena deflate, then, and feels a pang of regret. _Young_ , she thinks again, _young, young, young_. But just as she is about to apologize, Devasena changes the subject one last time, somehow answering the question that has haunted the pair's interactions almost from the start.

“I married your son because loving him has made me a better woman,” Devasena says. “For eight days I asked him to show me the Mahishmati he loved before we became its rulers, and it was only then that I realized that I was not the only one who had been transformed.”

Sivagami looks up, and when she meets Devasena’s gaze it is with the sense of one of Baahu’s machines finally turning in the way he designed, each part turning, each part working together to form a whole greater than itself. This is her son, she thinks, and that same son is Devasena’s husband -- how could anything so simple have seemed so hard?

“They love him,” Devasena continues, “and not because of his birth, or breeding, or status. He is loved because he loves in turn, and it is this love that spurs him towards defense, towards investment, towards innovation.”

She laughs, and the sound Sivagami realizes is wet. “There is no blood that can make someone beloved,” Devasena says. “I have never seen someone command such respect, or provide it in turn. He wants the throne, just as you said. But more than himself, he wants it because they want it so badly for him.”

“He was an orphan,” Sivagami says softly, “and so he found a million parents. What child would not move mountains for their family? What nation does not crave the ascension of their son?”

“He has a mother,” Devasena says with a sense of faint surprise, “all that he is can only be a reflection of you.”

Sivagami feels a blazing warmth then, and for once during this last month, she knows that it is not due to the liquor. Her eyes sting. “You do yourself a disservice by claiming you are not for politics,” she says rubbing at her cheeks. “You’ve managed to handle me quite expertly.”

“Well,” Devasena says, with just enough of a drawl that Sivagami realizes it is an imitation of herself, speaking the only word she could get out this last month when confronted with the enigma of her daughter. They laugh.

“I always wanted a mother,” Devasena says finally, and Sivagami feels rather than sees the girl rise from her seat and make her way across the room, and then she feels Devasena falling to the ground still with her customary assurance, moving until her cheek is only inches away from the silk that covers Sivagami’s knee. Sivagami’s hand rises of its own accord to Devasena’s hair which she knows to be long and lustrous when it is outside the dour bun the girl insists on. Perhaps tomorrow Sivagami will oil it, and the day after she will ask a servant to teach her how to braid.

“How fortunate,” is what she says out loud, rising from her seat and then sinking easily to the ground beside Devasena. She guides the girl's head to her shoulder, and if Sivagami’s eyes are not the only ones that leak, that secret is for no one but the walls. “How fortunate,” Sivagami repeats, just as much to the universe as to Devasena, this proud princess from the mountains, “because I have always wanted a daughter.”

Devasena snorts, the sound muffled by Sivagami’s blouse. “What a pair,” she says, and Sivagami can only agree.

******

“Mother,” Amarendra Baahubali, future Emperor from Udayagiri to the sea, from Kuntala to the Kalakeyan forests walks with purpose into Sivagami’s sitting room, before pausing in barely concealed horror at the sight before his eyes.

“By the Great God himself,” he declares, and Sivagami wonders if she may have to alter her perception of Baahu as a man of few words. “Are you both _drunk_?”

Devasena, whose head now rests in Sivagami’s lap giggles. Sivagami, wise and courageous matron, regent, queen mother that she is can only take another sip with the hand unoccupied by carding through Devasena's hair.

“Yes,” she says simply, “we are.”

“Well,” Baahu says, never more Sivagami’s son than at that moment. “Considering how neither of you is dead, and in fact seem to be quite pleased with yourselves, I suppose there are worse things to be.”

“As always dearest,” Devasena says, turning her head amidst Sivagami’s silks to face her husband and ignoring the way his entire figure seems to soften at the sight, “I rely on the foundation of your good opinion.” Alcohol makes Devasena more truthful than she intends, Sivagami thinks, but Baahu perceives the lightness of tone more than the depth of the words.

“That’s not what you were saying last night, _dearest_ ,” Baahu begins, but Sivagami in her new role as mother to a daughter clears her throat before he can finish.

“Leave, Baahu,” she demands imperiously. “My daughter and I will call for you if we have need.”

Baahu, attuned to the tone of an order after 25 years of devotion salutes and leaves before he can fully process the statement.

“ _Daughter?_ ” Sivagami and Devasena hear from behind the door he had so graciously closed. Neither wood nor shock can quite conceal his joy. “Since _when_?”

"Since today," Sivagami says firmly, and Devasena hums in contentment. "Goodbye!" 

**Author's Note:**

> ***edit*** i just looked over this and edited it and also fixed the issues of the missing italics. read and review please!!!!
> 
> IM POSTING THIS OFF MY PHONE AT 2 AM I PROMISE ILL GO BACK AND FIX THE COMPLETE LACK OF ITALICS AND ANY OTHER MISTAKES HAPPY BIRTHDAY BAAHU LOVE U LOVE UR MOM LOVE UR WIFE! PLEASE READ AND REViEW SQUAD LOVE YOU MOST!


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